Unclean Spirit (4 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

              Penelope greeted Starr and Tamara as they entered the motel room. Tamara scooped the cat up in her arms and nuzzled her fur. "Hi, sweetie, it's so good to see you again." Penelope loved Tamara and returned her affection with deep, low purrs. As soon as she smelled the burgers that Starr had carried in, however, Pen jumped from Tamara's arms and demanded in no uncertain terms that she get her share.

              Mother and daughter were physically and emotionally drained and collapsed into their beds after eating and bathing. Starr had chosen not to apprise Tamara of her spectral connection to Paul and his accident, so she was somewhat startled when from the darkness of the room Tamara commented, "There's more to this than I know, isn't there, Starr? More than I may want to know."

              Paul and Tamara had always known that their child was special, just how special, however, did not begin to dawn on them until that day in 1966 when Starr had announced that Peter was hungry; after that, they paid extra special attention to the things Starr said and did. Tamara would never forget Starr's twelfth birthday. They had all journeyed to Elephant Butte Lake for a celebratory picnic. The weather was gorgeous, the water was calm, the mood was jubilant. 

              "Tamara, Paul, come here--quick!" The urgency in Patsy's voice had drawn Paul and Tamara to the water's edge where Patsy, Marybeth, and Starr had been skipping rocks. Starr's parents didn't have to ask what was wrong; they could see it for themselves. Starr, ringlets of hair plastered to her face by sweat, eyes vacant yet transfixed on the water, was sitting on the shore as though in a trance.

              "She won't respond to us at all! What's wrong with her, Paul?" Patsy's distress was evident.

              Paul had rushed to his daughter's side. "Starr, baby, it's Daddy," Paul said as her took hold of his little girl's hand.

              Starr responded immediately to her father's touch and her eyes, no longer vacuous, told him that she was okay.

              "Daddy, Aunt Lucy was there," Starr pointed to the lake, "under the water. I saw her and now I don't. I'm scared, Daddy! Please, can we go home?"

              Starr had rushed into the house calling out for Lucy who, though not actually a relative, was the family's landlady and good friend. She had not gone with them to the lake that day because long car trips made her ill; she was going to stay home and bake Starr the best birthday cake ever.              Starr had run into the kitchen, expecting Lucy to be there with an extraordinary cake--the cake was there all right, but Lucy wasn't. As Starr stared at the cake, she began to feel quite dizzy and had to sit down. It was then that she spied the water leaking from beneath the dishwasher. A virtual river snaked its way from under the appliance and into the utility room. It was there that Starr found Lucy lying unconscious on the floor. Her fall on that day in 1971 had resulted in a broken arm and minor concussion; her death in 1995 had resulted from renal failure. They all missed Lucy. They all had a healthy respect for water. They all took Starr's "visions" very seriously.

              "Tell me what you've seen, Starr, what you've felt."

              "Ma, there's nothing for me to tell you. I haven't..."

              "Cut the crap, Starr!" Tamara regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry for snapping at you. It's just that I've been so worried about your father. I need to know if he's really going to be okay now. Please don't keep anything from me. You're my daughter; I can sense your distress. What is it?"

              Starr loved her mother dearly and could not ignore her request so she told her everything, beginning with the events in Dallas and ending with the pain she experienced as she grasped Paul's blistered hand.

              "I don't know what it all means, Mom, but I can't shake the feeling that there's more to Dad's accident than just a fall down some stairs, something ominous."

              Tamara knew that her daughter wasn't holding anything back from her; she also knew that Starr's impression of menace could not be disregarded.  "Is Dad going to pull through this?"

              "I don't know, Ma, I just don't know."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

              The Intensive Care Unit was as quiet as such a high tech area gets at night. Cassie was seated at the desk having a well-deserved cup of coffee as she watched the various patient monitors. Mrs. Steagall in Bed A was still in atrial fib; Mr. Watkins in Bed B was still hypertensive; Mr. Forsythe in Bed C was in normal sinus rhythm. Paul Forsythe, now there was an interesting case. Cassie had seen a lot in her twenty years as a critical care nurse and, comparatively speaking, the evacuation of a subdural hematoma was no big deal. It wasn't Mr. Forsythe's neurological condition that intrigued Cassie, it was the spontaneous remission of the pustules on his hand that had her mystified--that, and the inexplicable aura of strangeness that surrounded the man. Cassie, like most experienced nurses, had learned to heed her gut reaction to patient situations; her gut was telling her that there was more going on with Mr. Forsythe than his physical assessment revealed.

              An alarm sounded on Mr. Forsythe's monitor. His heart rate had accelerated from sixty-six beats per minute to one hundred and fifty.

              The temperature in the darkened cellar had plummeted to well below fifty degrees. Lukas and Charlie shivered, internally as well as externally.

              "Stay put, Preachur. I donno what’s goin' on here but hold on 'till I find some kinda light."

              Lukas, stranded on the middle of the basement stairs, rubbed his arms and listened as Charlie rummaged around in the room below.

              "Gawddamn sumabitch!!"

              "Charlie! What is it? What happened?"

              "Fuckin' skeeters is down here! Some big muther just bit me on the nose. Shit! Hurts like a sumabitch! Fuck if I'm gonna put up with this shit! Mr. F. keeps a heavy-duty flashlight down here somewheres. Soons I find it, them fuckers is history!"

              Lukas was freezing and, if truth be told, more than a little frightened. Charlie's clamoring about as he searched for the torch was somewhat reassuring in its normalcy, but Lukas sensed that things were far from normal in the Forsythe house. Something was badly amiss here and Lukas wasn't sure he could face it.

              The early portion of Lukas Duncan's life had been far from idyllic. Like so many other unfortunate children in the world, he had been cursed with a father who beat him regularly and whittled away at his self-esteem. Compounding the paternal abuse was a weak and mentally impaired mother whose insecurities and fears prevented her from acting in her children's best interests. Had it not been for Ruby, Lukas' older sister, the young boy would have known nothing of familial love.

              Ruby, Lukas' senior by four years, was a beautiful and creative girl who took her brother on journeys to lands where unicorns grazed, fairies danced, and orchids and gardenias blanketed the ground. She taught Lukas how to dull the pain of his bruises by mentally projecting himself away from their drab house and into a crystal clear lake where brightly hued koi and golden seahorses emitted sparkling rays of light that forced the pain out of Lukas' body and into the waiting jaws of shimmering purple and yellow angelfish. Ruby, by way of her love and patience and imagination, was Lukas' single reason for living and he would have done anything for her.

              It had never even entered Lukas' mind that Ruby was also abused by their father. His sister never spoke of any mistreatment and her body was free of any telltale signs of same. It came as a total shock to Lukas when, at the age of fourteen, he discovered, quite by accident, that his sister was more a victim of exploitation than he was.

              It was very late at night and Lukas, unable to sleep, was on his way to the kitchen for a snack when he heard deep grunts and pitiful moaning emanating from Ruby's room. Thinking his sister ill, Lukas gently opened the bedroom door; the scene that greeted him was almost more than his young mind could comprehend. Ruby, bent over, nitie shoved up above her naked bottom, was being savagely raped by her father. Lukas, as yet unnoticed, watched as a trickle of blood ran down the back of Ruby's thigh. Just at that moment, the rapist-father caught sight of his son's reflection in the mirror.

              "Nice little piece of ass, ain't she son? It's real tight and warm in your sister's little hole. I'm almost finished here, then you can have a turn."

              Ruby, tears streaming down her face, tried to wrench herself away from her father but the movement only served to excite the man more and his thrusts came harder and faster. Lukas pleaded with his father to stop hurting Ruby, to which his father responded, "Can't you see she likes it, son? They all like it." 

              Lukas ran from the room, calling out wildly for his mother's help. Mrs. Duncan, however, had already slipped into her bedroom closet and pulled the door tightly shut.

              "No, Pa, no!!" Something in Ruby's tone stopped Lukas dead in his tracks. He stared at the fireplace tools and, when he returned to Ruby's room, he carried a poker with him.

              Quickly and without reservation, Lukas rammed the poker as far as possible up his father's rectum just as the man was reaching climax. The father's initial screams were deafening in their intensity, but were preferable to the silence that followed as the man's eyes caught hold of the terrified young boy; Lukas realized in those few seconds that he was peering into the face of pure evil. And, as Ruby and Lukas huddled together, their father slowly and painfully bled to death. 

              There had never been an investigation into the senior Duncan's death, essentially because no one outside the Duncan home had even an inkling of what had occurred there. Ruby, Lukas and their mother--who was far past understanding what she was doing--had buried the vile man's body beneath mounds of dirt and rocks. The Duncan children then spread the word that their father had run out on them.

              Lukas was not proud of what he had done and he prayed nightly for the Lord's forgiveness. He was to spend the rest of his life trying to atone for the sin of murder.

              A light shot up the stairway and trapped Lukas in its sphere of illumination. Charlie, whose hand shook as he tightly gripped the flashlight, looked up at the mocking and malevolent image that had superimposed itself over Pastor Duncan.

              Cassie, stethoscope in place, was auscultating Paul's heart sounds. He was still tachycardic and the nurse wanted to determine if he had developed a murmur or rub. Cassie glanced up at her patient's face as she listened to the rapid beat of his heart. Paul's eyelids popped open and his hand clamped onto Cassie's throat. The last thing Cassie heard before slumping to the floor was chillingly villainous laughter.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

              "Charlie! Would you please get that dadblasted light out of my eyes!"  As Lukas spoke, the image that had encased him vanished. Charlie rubbed his eyes and muttered to himself, "Gotta lay off the sauce!"

              "Charlie, please!"

              "Oops, sorry, Preachur," Charlie apologized as he aimed the light away from Lukas.

              "Let's get out of here, Charlie. I don't think I'll ever feel warm again!"

              "Yeah, okay."

              As Charlie made his way to the stairs, the overhead lights lit up the cellar and the temperature returned to its normal stifling ninety-two degrees.

              "What the hell?"

              "Charlie, your nose!"

              "Yeah, I know. Feels like that damn skeeter brought company for supper!"

              But what Lukas saw when he looked at Charlie's nose was not a mosquito bite. Lukas didn't know what had attacked the old guy, but whatever it was had left a lump the size of a robin’s egg.

              "Come on, Charlie, let's go upstairs before the lights go out again."

              "Gawddamn!" Charlie exclaimed as he examined his nose in the mirror, "I weren't purty to begin with, but not even Thunder-Thighs Thelma over to the truck stop would have me now, and she'd do near 'bout anybody for a steak dinner and bottle of Jim Beam!"

              Comic relief seemed to be in order, as was evidenced by Lukas' and Charlie's somewhat nervous laughter.

              Once the men had relieved themselves of their pent-up tension, Lukas ministered to Charlie's nose. He really didn't know what to do other than cover it with an antibiotic ointment.

              "You know, Charlie, you best have Doc Feener take a look at that in the morning. Looks like it could get real nasty real fast.                  

              "Okay if I use the phone? Lillie's probably worried about me." 

              As Lukas went to call his wife, Charlie addressed the mirror, "Charlie Toobin, yer one ugly mutherfucker, and you smell bad too!" Charlie was right. A stench, not even perceptible moments earlier, draped itself around him.

              The shrill ring of a telephone in the wee hours of the morning is rarely a welcome sound. Tamara grabbed the phone as Starr switched on a bedside lamp.

              "Hello?"

              "Mrs. Forsythe?" inquired a male voice.             

              "Yes, this is Tamara Forsythe. Who's calling?"

              "This is Dr. Gomez. There's been an incident at the hospital. Your husband is fine, physically, but he's very upset and I thought perhaps that you should come on over here. You see, Mrs. Forsythe, your husband assaulted a nurse."

              Tamara nearly dropped the phone. "He did what?"

              As the doctor explained what had occurred, Starr impatiently waited to be filled in. Penelope, angry at being disturbed, jumped off Starr's bed and pranced over to her water bowl.                             "We'll be there as soon as possible, Doctor...and thank you for notifying me personally."

              Tamara hung up the phone and answered Starr's inquisitive look. "...and Cassie wasn't seriously hurt; she apparently fainted from a lack of oxygen and that was probably a good thing, because her fall to the floor is what caused Paul to release her. Her x-rays were normal, but, just to be on the safe side, Dr. Gomez is keeping her in the hospital for the rest of the night.”

              "Christ, what could have possessed Paul to do such a thing?"

              Starr had a feeling that they would soon find out.